June 17, 2011OpenStack Conference Misc Sessions

I’m wrapping up my notes from the OpenStack Conference with a rundown of some of the other sessions I attended that didn’t fit neatly in the areas I was focusing on during my time at the conference (Networking, Block/Volumes, Object Storage). Here are my remaining notes.

Unified Identity System
This is a welcome proposal. There is a need to unify the interfaces for authentication between Nova, Swift and other upcoming services. This proposal is to rip out identity into a separate system so that new OpenStack services can be written without having to re-implement an authentication service. Basically, the proposal is to have a similar architecture to that of Swift. Where there is a separate service (called Keystone) which is responsible for responding to a series of API calls for Authentication/Authorization. This is a huge change as ~30% of the code will need to be touched. As such, the they will be doing the refactoring in phases. I’m looking forward to this change as it will help out with the integrations we’re doing.http://plansthis.com/auth

Atlas Load Balancing
Rackspace is developing an load balancing service. Zeus is the backend. Something unusual about the project is that is’s a Java project that integrates with Glassfish, rather than the usual python stack. Naturally, Citrix is working on a solution based on NetScaler as well. An open-source version based on HAProxy is in the works as well.http://wiki.openstack.org/Atlas-LB

Reference Architecture
There was a little coming down to earth on Friday morning when references architectures were discussed. It was refreshing break from days spent discussing features and adding layers to the existing architecture. I imagine what becomes a reference architecture is going to be whomever rolls up their sleeves and builds a stable CI system that goes through frequent builds & test runs. Likely a contingent of Rackspace, Dell and Citrix.http://etherpad.openstack.org/configshttps://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/reference-architectures

Scalr
Sebastian Stadil did a short description of Scalar. He proposed Scalr to be a tool for end-users to manage their OpenStack resources.http://wiki.openstack.org/Scalr

That about does it for me. There were a ton of sessions I didn’t get a chance to get to. There is a ton of ground to cover over the next few months. I know I’m looking forward to the future of OpenStack.